Alone Doesn't Feel So Cold
by Foibles and Fables
Summary: These are months of life without living. Lexie struggles to come to terms with what's still left over. AU post-6.13; Mark/Lexie, Alex/Lexie. Strong T.
1. Chapter 1

******A fanfic written for the Help Haiti auction on LiveJournal. Four parts, completed. Title and lyrics are from "Alone" by Tresspassers William. AU after 6.13. For CitronPresse.**

******Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is the property of Shonda Rhimes and ABC. This writing is for entertainment purposes only and is not for profit.**

--

_You gave me cold glass love_

_You've got teeth for biting and you've bore a hole in me_

--

Exactly how long does it take to fall from a standing position?

When is the precise moment you realize that you're falling?

These are months of looking in from the outside.

These are months of life without living.

--

That afternoon, when you feel your cell phone vibrate furiously against your hip, preparedness kind of jumps out the proverbial window. It doesn't even make a dignified leap, it takes no graceful swan dive from the ledge; it mostly flails, busting clumsily through the glass, tumbling and twisting as the ground approaches faster and faster. And then there it is, all of the bravery and readiness you've built up over the past few months, all of the _you can do this_, splattered on the sidewalk five stories below.

Because you already know exactly what your phone wants to tell you. Well, what _Alex_ wants to tell you, but whatever. You could just ignore it and go on with your life. You_ could_.

But, a minute and a half later, when your fingers start to itch and your stomach is in knots, you look anyway.

Sure enough, your phone is proclaiming a text message from Alex. The one he had promised to send you if he was on the case when it happened. And, he is, just because fate obviously wants to break you down.

The message cuts straight to the chase. You can almost hear Alex's voice, gruff and quick, as you read.

_Baby is out. Everything is ok. He should be in the nursery by the time you get this message. I'll be in on-call room 2 if you need me_

A surge of dread controls you, makes you delete the message, like it never existed in the first place. The phone moves from your fist to the table so fast it might as well have just burst into flames. It's not exactly the most inconspicuous thing in the world, and you're pretty sure everyone else in the cafeteria is staring at you, like they _know_. So you feign nonchalance, trying to travel about two minutes into the past, taking another bite of your sandwich, even though it suddenly tastes like cardboard. Swallowing is forced and horribly unpleasant, and you hope you don't make a weird face as it slides down your throat.

At least you know now, you think. You know what to avoid and how to tread lightly. You know what you don't want to see and how not to see it.

But you're a glutton for punishment. You're going to torture yourself, and you don't know why (if you knew why, you'd _stop_). You stand on rubbery legs, pick up your tray, and head slowly out of the cafeteria. Walking proves to be tough when the floor is rolling under your feet like this.

You just can't stay away.

--

You see the baby three times that day and then never again.

The first one is the hardest to get ready for. It's accompanied by that thickness in your lungs that makes it feel like, if you inhale, you'll never be able to let it out. So you focus on your breathing, in, out, in, out, during your trek from the cafeteria to the nursery. Step left, step right, left, right. As you walk, your legs inexplicably bend in places where there are no joints. Still, you keep moving, eyes on the ground, avoiding contact with the people you pass because you're completely convinced that you resemble a zombie.

Through some anomaly in the workings of the universe, you make it all the way there without tripping over yourself or knocking anything over. All of a sudden, there's the nursery window, the softer lighting, and the cloud of serenity that tends to linger in the air throughout this place.

Too bad it's not penetrative. You're shaking.

You cling to the wall across from window, knee bent and foot resting against it as well, hoping to look casual and not like you're about to explode. Your eyes dart to the left, right, and then to the window to try to pinpoint the correct baby. It's only a few seconds until you're looking both ways again, because if somebody walks by and realizes what you're doing, they'll think you're pathetic (which this kind of is, but that's not the point).

But, after three more peeks through the window, you discover that those babies all look _exactly_ the same from this distance; there are no defining features besides their blue-or-pink caps and how some are crying and some aren't. And you sigh and think _screw it_ because nobody who has walked by has paid you any mind.

Three reluctant steps and you're up close and personal with that window. You swallow and the lump in your throat gags you. The babies are all swaddled tightly, some red-faced with their mouths open wide in a muted scream, others with their eyes closed, just being there.

Which one is _he_?

Starting at the bassinets farthest to the left, you look at the names written on the cards clipped onto the plastic, the color corresponding to their hats. Back to front. You methodically step from one pair to the next. Tyler. Darius. Gabriella. Carter. Audrey. Hannah. Zoey.

The baby closest to the window in that fourth pair has a different card attached to his plastic bed. There's no line for "name."

There he is.

Suddenly you're feeling like this is just idiotic and you should run, but your legs don't get the message. Instead, your fist moves to your mouth, and your teeth trap the middle knuckle of your index finger. And you _look_.

He's one of the peaceful ones, at least for the moment. Eyes gently shut, dark eyelashes touching his cheeks. Lips parted in an "o." The blue cap on his head falls short of wispy eyebrows, and is perfectly rounded at the top. C-section baby. His skin is soft pink in color. Healthy, despite everything he's been through already.

This sleeping angel-face doesn't at all match the amount of trouble he's already caused. You know you're not only thinking about his mother's surgeries, which makes you feel like a horrible person for blaming an hours-old baby for any of this.

His is the kind of adorable face that would have made you grin if he had been any other baby in the world.

Because this little thing in front of you has Sloan's face. And Sloan's face is the same as…

Biting your finger even harder stops you from thinking. The familiar nose, miniature version, is enough to suffice for thoughts.

You distract yourself from the baby by reading the little card instead. Written on it is simple information written in a nurse's looping print.

_Birthdate:_ (you don't look at this one. It's today. You don't need a written version of the date emblazoned in your mind; you'll remember it enough as it is.)

_Room Number: 3265_

_Birth Weight: 7 lbs. 12 oz._

_Birth Length: 20 in._

_Obstetrician: E. Chen_

_Pediatrician: A. Robbins; assist. A. Karev_

_Mother: Sloan Riley_

The last line makes this whole thing painfully real. There's no waking up from a cold-sweat dream that doesn't exist. Your stomach twists itself into yet another knot.

The baby is still calm when your gaze hesitantly slides to him again. You stare for another few moments, wondering how he hasn't yet sensed _you_ there and began to wail, straining his tiny lungs in vehement protest. But he stays quiet. Your forehead is pressed against the glass, and it's a metaphor for the way your life has been for these past months: looking in from the outside, face smashed against the window. A silent, sneaky intruder.

You watch this little boy breathe for a few more moments, wondering how in the hell he can possibly exist. This child (and grandchild) is here in defiance of nature, almost – in defiance of the way things could have (would have, should have) been. You clamp down on your finger until your nose burns and tears prick at your eyes, just so you can say you're crying because you've chewed your knuckle into bloody rawness and not because of the baby in the bassinet before you.

Someone with a vaguely familiar face walks behind you, tossing a curious look in your direction. You find it best to tear yourself away. A pair of scissors or a hand saw would have helped.

And you think that's going to be more than enough to keep you awake all night.

But, every free moment of that day finds you in the maternity ward, hovering around room 3265. The first time you creep past it, wishing you had some kind of disguise, the door is closed. Same goes for the second and third. You go for a fourth, knowing how _stupid_ this is, promising that you'll stop after this attempt. And what do you know, the door is halfway goddamn open.

Your guts go into free-fall.

It's like putting your hand on a hot stove. You know it's going to hurt, but, until you do it, you won't know _how_ it's going to hurt – a blistering burn, a smarting sting, a painful prick, or will your brain involuntarily tug your arm back so quickly that you won't feel it at all? It's difficult to arrange yourself in an unobtrusive position by the central hub that still lets you see inside of that room. Your fingers inch closer to the stovetop. You wish you could stop. No matter how many times you tell yourself you're going to regret it, the urge never goes away. A little more to the left, angle right, tilt your head, rest your chin casually in your hand, press your palm against the white-hot burner…

It's a clear view and you hold back a gasp, changing it into a badly-acted cough. This was a bad idea, momentously bad, even, and the pain is searing but you can't react to it.

Because right there in that room, directly in your line of vision, is Mark Sloan, sitting in the bedside chair, cradling that blanketed bundle in his arms.

Sunlight streams softly into the hospital room. It didn't rain today. As if this moment just wants to max out on cruelty, the blue cap is gone. He has a full head of dark hair. A familiar kind of dark. So dark it makes you a little bit sick.

The way Mark is holding him isn't exactly right – his arms are bent at awkward angles, maybe a degree or so too little. Still, the baby seems content, and as much as you bite your tongue and squeeze your eyes shut, you can't help but imagine how he feels. Warm. Secure. Like nothing bad will ever get to him.

You're trembling as your body rejects the memories, reacts against the phantom arms wrapping around your midsection. This is _pathetic_. This is the lowest of the low, right here. You're watching something so sacred and private and he wouldn't want you to be watching. Even though he won't notice you – even though Sloan is fast asleep in the hospital bed.

The way Mark is looking at that child paralyzes your lungs and pushes at the back of your knees, ready to make them give out.

His eyes are fixed intently on the boy's face, jaw steeled, eyebrows pulled upward in the slightest way possible. It's intense and persistent, like he's trying to memorize something, _everything_: the warm weight, the number of eyelashes, the exact hue of the squinted eyes, every experimental curl of his fingers, every little sigh. He's looking at him like he'd fight off an army to keep him right where he is. Like he has to make this moment, sweet, quiet, but all too short, last a lifetime.

You'll remember it enough for both of you.

It's akin to a sucker punch, because you've seen this look before. You remember every chill down your spine when those blue eyes locked with yours, when his grip on your waist would tighten just a _little_ bit, as if everything good would be taken from him if he let go.

(you never thought he would – _I can't even look at you_)

Suddenly, there's venom in your mouth, something so poisonous and awful-tasting that you have to spit it out; if you swallow it, it'll corrode your insides until there's nothing left. It's an abrupt bitter, jealous, angry thought, vaguely like _it's not fair_, one of the slips that only happen occasionally anymore.

You should be in there. You should be seeing Mark and that beautiful baby from a different perspective. You should be in that bed. That should be _your_ dark-haired baby he's holding for the first time and pouring enough love for a lifetime into. He should be a child for you to love as well. They're all _shoulds_ that will never, ever be _wills_ and you don't know why that still scares the hell out of you.

Mark has everything he wants right there with him. And you? You're out here.

Somewhere along the line, you must have started crying. Your cheeks are hot but you feel clammy all over. You're entirely nauseous. Someone will notice you standing there, shivering and sniffing. You have to leave.

The third and final time you come crawling back with your tail between your legs, everything makes sense.

It's at the nursery, again. Stealing a glance at his bassinet as you pretend to walk briskly past, he's not there. Panic brings you to a skidding halt. Doubling back and looking through the window, you see a young-looking couple by the wall. The man is tall and lanky, with dark blond hair and glasses over chestnut eyes. The woman is considerably shorter, and her curly auburn hair reaches her shoulders. Her big blue eyes are shiny with unshed tears. They're not from around here, you can tell on sight. They're too tan, that special kind of California tan.

And between them, lying in her arms, with the man's hand cradling his head, is Sloan's son.

You understand everything.

You get Mark's desperate gaze. It hurts, more than it should. You've heard whispers of this, bits and pieces dropped every so often by Arizona and Cristina – you only ever get half of the story, but you're on the outside, so you thrive on every little bit.

Their gazes – gentle and bewildered, like he's the most precious thing they've ever seen – are confirmation enough.

You're an idiot for what you do next.

When you walk through the nursery door, stepping evenly, holding your breath, you feel them watching you – not aggressively, not like you're a threat, just with wary curiosity. Maybe it's that your scrubs are blue and not the pink ones they've been seeing all day. Or maybe they can sense the bond between you and their child – the convoluted, stretched-thin bond that still connects you to him.

You flash them a tiny smile as you pass, returned by the woman, carefully, before you move past them and grab a random chart. They forget about you entirely, returning their full attention to their perfect son.

After a few more seconds and the same number of quick glances over your shoulder, you speak. "He's beautiful." You hope your voice doesn't sound as strangled to them as it does to you.

His mother turns halfway toward you, eyes not daring to leave her boy. "Thank you," she says softly. "He is handsome, isn't he?" The man smiles and nods, gently stroking the baby's downy hair with his thumb. His arm comes to rest around the woman and it's a pang in your heart.

"He's our son," the woman blurts, like it's only just sunk in. "He's our son and he's _here_." She turns her head, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry, you probably think I'm crazy. But it's been so hard and I can't believe I'm holding him." She laughs at herself, a sound that contrasts her teary eyes. "Sorry, again. I'm oversharing."

"Oh, no," you say with fake cheer, or at least as much as you can muster when your throat is constricting. "You're new parents. You get to overshare. It's part of the deal."

They both grin. You try. It feels awkward and scary. You don't try again.

But there's the edge of the cliff, and you're walking towards it. One foot hovers out in space. You can't see far enough to know where the bottom is.

You put your weight on it. When the words come out, they're almost in someone else's voice.

"What's his name?"

The man answers this time, proud as can be. That baritone will be in your head forever.

"Travis," he tells you, smiling broadly. Apparently it's not adequate, so he says more, voice strong. "Travis Andrew Malone."

The words ring in the air, bouncing off of the walls until they register in your mind. Your lungs are screaming. You haven't inhaled since you spoke.

"That's…that's great. It suits him," you choke. "Good luck. With everything." It's stammered and fast and wholly insincere but you don't care. You just need to get out of there. It's another burden for you to carry, something else that only you can know. A new hollowness inside of you.

You don't wait for their reaction. You just walk out, eyes shut tight. You won't let yourself cry about this. It's none of your concern anymore, you tell yourself, begging yourself to be convinced.

You're not.

--

You don't give in to Alex's offer of comfort until exactly 9:18 PM.

Home, says your brain; apartment, says everything else as you push through the door to the place where you and Alex have been living for the past few months. Meredith's house held too many memories – of attics and ovens and breakfast kisses and going steady – for the both of you, so you moved out, splitting the bill on a little apartment. It's not the best thing, especially since it reminds you a little too much of George, but at least those times can be looked back on fondly.

He's leaning against the kitchen counter when you step through the door, looking out the tiny window above the sink, typical black wife beater and sweatpants, beer bottle gripped loosely in his hand. He raises his eyebrows and nods in acknowledgement, and you remember that he's seen him too.

You wonder if he knows you went to look as well.

With that thought, you drop your bag and keys. By the time they hit the floor, you're standing in front of him. You say nothing, just swallow and square your shoulders, staring into his relaxed eyes and at the cool smirk he's wearing (it's not a jab, not even teasing, it's just _there_). Fingers wrapping around his bottle, you take it from his hand and take a swig. Then you kiss him, hard, and he kisses you right back without missing a beat, and this has happened enough times in the past months that you both know exactly what comes next. Choreographed moments with ample rehearsal time.

You feel his fingers curl underneath your belt and he yanks you closer, a bit more forcefully than usual, but you don't care. Because this is not the classic definition of "meaningful." It's something to feel that isn't either extreme: pain or emptiness. It's just _something_. Something that fills the hollow, something that pushes away the memories for a little while. His hand snakes up your shirt, under your bra, and you moan softly into his mouth, fingernails digging harshly into the back of his neck. He swears, and it's almost pleasing.

You grasp the thin cotton of his tank top and pull it upward, and he helps by bringing it over his head and tossing it unceremoniously aside. He makes quick work of your shirt as your hands roam over his chest and stomach, taking a moment to trace the small raised scar on his left flank with your fingertips, and with a surge of guilt you remember that you're not the only one who's been knocked around by the last shitty year.

It's not pity. It's just another connection the two of you have, the only reason for all of this.

Before you know it, you're stripped down to your underwear and Alex is lifting you up, holding you by the backs of your thighs. You wrap your legs around his hips, and you feel him pressed hard against you beneath the cotton of his sweatpants. He bites your neck and you shudder silently; the haze growing in your mind is a good one. Your lips and tongues move in a frenzy, breathless and mindless. He tastes like twisted comfort and you wonder if you taste like despair. The body heat he's throwing off and the curve of his bicep under your palm anchor you to real life.

Hoisting you up, jostling you so that you have to grip his shoulders to stay attached, he takes a few steps forward. His lower lip is caught between your teeth and you grind against him, eliciting a deep rumble in his throat.

You do it again and you don't make it to the bedroom. The two of you melt to the bare hardwood floor of the living room, there next to the still-packed moving boxes (because taking things out of them would be acknowledging this as something that's more-than-semi-permanent).

No time to lose. Get on with it. And you do. He kicks out of his sweats while his fingers hook around the waistband of your panties.

The sex is rough and fast and not the most satisfying. But it'll do, simply because, when he's buried inside of you, you can't _think_; nothing but intangibles swirl through your mind, things like _full_ and _again_ and _yes_. When it's over, there are no fireworks. Your fingers aren't entwined with his. There's no moment of profundity, no hyper-awareness of yourself and him together, no eye contact. Yours are closed as you arch your back and gasp. He pushes upward one last time, tenses, and lets out a carefully-controlled grunt.

And it's over. The two of you lie there on the floor, silence persisting, neither of you feeling the need to change that. Your knees ache from the hardwood and you're sure there's going to be a huge bruise on your hip when you wake up tomorrow morning. There's no contact between you and Alex, you're an inch apart – nothing except his hand on the inside of your thigh, slowly rubbing up and down.

He smokes a cigarette even though he hates it, a _fuck you_ to the landlord's rules, and you take a drag here and there, even though you hate it too. It's the coughing spells that come after that you love, like you're expelling everything bad inside of you. Simple idea. Cut into the bad, the dead, the slough, and let the good trapped beneath breathe. Right now, your every nerve is exposed to the world, raw and utterly agonizing. Evan Lang. You have to make it feel worse before it feels better.

"You okay?" Alex asks after you've finished a particularly bad hacking fit, and the undercurrent of concern in his gravelly voice clues you in that he's not referring exclusively to the coughing. The world swims in your watery eyes (a side-effect of your lungs' protest) as they meet his hazel ones.

"Yeah," you whisper. And it's true, for now. Because this Something with Alex has filled the hollow; it's pushed the image of Mark with Sloan's dark-haired son deep inside. It'll never be gone, but you're holding it away at arm's length, far enough that it can swing its fists all it wants but it won't be able to touch you until your elbow gives out.

--

You wake up in Alex's bed the next morning, and you're there alone. Dragging yourself to a sitting position, you sigh deeply – time for another day of life as it's been. Your bones ache and your whole existence feels sore. You don't want to move. But you have to.

When you turn your head, you're met with your reflection in Alex's mirror. Biting your lip, you slide out of bed and approach it. You're not sure how long you stand there and stare blankly at yourself.

Your hair, messy with sleep, is much shorter than you had come to like – its ends hang level with your chin. You don't like it, but it's your own fault, so you can't complain about it. You cut it like this to get rid of the blonde and hopefully erase that horrible, misguided idea altogether (you'll never forget the yelp of surprise, and that _face_). The last bit was finally chopped off about two weeks ago, and it became a bit easier to breathe. The change in length is less awful than the dye-job. He was right. Not badass. Not fun. It's back to your natural jet color, but you still don't quite recognize yourself.

(then again, you haven't quite _felt_ like yourself for a while either, so it fits)

What's striking about this, though, is that it took you until now to realize that you look kind of like you did when you first came to Seattle Grace. The short hair, the big, nervous eyes, the lower lip perpetually held between your teeth.

But you're not that person anymore.

Because, all of a sudden, you're twenty-six years old. All of a sudden, you're a third-year resident.

And it's been almost two years since you said "teach me" and had it mean anything more than the obvious.


	2. Chapter 2

_You and me, hot and cold_

_You have crossed all safely while I teeter on my rope_

--

A month passes, painfully slow and astonishingly fast. Routine gets you through it. Go to work. Perform surgery (you're declaring Neurosurgery – as much as you've tried, Plastics just doesn't work anymore). Occasionally fuck Alex. Sleep. Repeat the process when the sun comes up.

But you deviate at times. You'll catch yourself thinking about him, watching him from afar, even though, at this point, you might as well be a wad of gum on the bottom of his shoe. Still, sometimes, you just have to _stare_.

Because, after the adoption, there's _no_ way that Mark Sloan is as okay as he seems to be.

There's no way he's as normal as he's acting, all mischievous smirks and glimmering eyes and joking with Callie.

You have to wonder where he's hiding the pain. But something happens when you imagine him suffering in silence, holding all of that hurt inside. It makes you hurt too. There's burning in your chest, swelling in your throat, like all of the allergic reactions you've experienced. Your nerves cry out, you want to touch him, tell him that none of this is his fault. Subtle like sunlight on skin, but overstated like an explosion. It's a surreal experience where Mark is like an extension of you, a part that has been forcibly removed. And everything in _your _body revolts against this loss, throwing itself into shock and torment.

Every time he walks past with not as much as a sidelong glance towards you, you hold your breath, putting all of your energy into keeping yourself in check. One of these days, you're sure you'll lose it; you'll keel over and never stand back up.

It takes a month for you to acknowledge that you still have feelings for him, feelings that terrify you. As soon as you get home that night, you bring out your tequila (a housewarming gift from Meredith), drink until you don't know what sober is, and take Alex to bed. Inject enough novocaine to numb what's lacking.

Mark doesn't want you anymore; any of the comfort you wish you could offer would be met by a look of confusion and contempt.

But you keep on wishing you could offer it.

Your life has become a tightrope act. Mark is on one side of the chasm below, Alex on the other. You teeter dangerously back and forth, heart hammering, body numb with fear. You slip towards Mark, freak out, overcorrect towards Alex and fall into him. With a drive of your hips, you hit the ground, and you feel like you should shatter into a thousand pieces.

Still, tempting both fate and your mortality, you keep climbing back up, battered, bruised, fractured, sprained, concussed.

You wonder how many more times this can happen before you're really _broken_.

--

A week later, you lose a kid.

A charming, redheaded, freckle-faced, nine-year-old boy, Danny, was brought in the day before, complaining of debilitating headaches and dizziness. Angio said dangerous aneurysm. Derek told you to keep a close eye on him until his surgery, which was scheduled for today.

He didn't make it.

You were performing yet another neuro exam when he seized and coded from out of nowhere. But you did your job, even though life didn't seem real. You hollered for someone to page Shepherd, loaded Danny with diazepam, slammed the code button with your fist, handled the paddles when the code team got there, and called the time of death because he was already long gone.

The last thing you did was tell Danny's father, who had reluctantly gone to the cafeteria for something to eat because of your gentle prodding, that his beloved nine-year-old son was dead.

And now, sitting alone in this dark on-call room, stomach churning, seriously concerned that you'll never be able to walk out of the door, you're completely bewildered. Your body wants to throw something, to kick and scream. Your brain doesn't cooperate, stuck on a single unfathomable concept.

You don't understand how you can be hurting this much after losing a little boy you knew for exactly thirty hours. Especially when Mark is so okay without the grandson you know all too well he wanted so much. _Needed_, you guess, after…well, the stuff he told you. You don't understand, and there's almost no feeling you hate more than that.

Almost.

--

Somehow you get through the rest of the day, forcing yourself to smile and say reassuring things when you really need someone to give that to you.

Later that night, you head down the hallway to your apartment, feet dragging wearily with every step. You want nothing more than to collapse into your bed and quietly cry yourself to sleep. And that's exactly the reason why you let out that tiny whimper of defeat when you see one of the four ties Alex owns tied tightly around the doorknob. A mutual promise the two of you made a while ago. _Do not disturb_. He's taken advantage of this a few times already. You haven't.

You're too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to get back in your car and drive to Meredith's. And you sure as hell can't just take a few steps and seek refuge in the apartment across from yours anymore, like you could with Callie and Cristina. You'll just have to wait here.

You sigh and lean against the wall, sinking to a sitting position. After a moment, an idea occurs to you. Something to pass the time until you'll be avoiding awkward eye contact with Alex's one-night stand while she walks briskly past you. You dig around in your purse until you find a crumpled piece of notebook paper and a pen.

Sitting on the cold hallway floor, knees pulled close to your chest, ass slowly going numb, you begin to write. It's a letter to Molly, and you're going to tell her the entire story, start to finish, since you've left out considerable chunks of vital information during your weekly phone calls. She has her life – Laura and Eric and everything – and you don't want to make her worry about you. Time to fill in the missing pieces. At least you won't have to say it out loud (you don't know if you could).

But it quickly reaches a point where the words aren't flowing anymore and you've lost fragile control and the tears falling reservedly on the paper are making the ink run. And any minute now, somebody's going to exit their apartment and see you, hunched over a crumpled piece of paper, crying softly to yourself, and they'll think you're a dangerous lunatic. That would just be fantastic.

So you wipe your eyes, rip the paper into a hundred tiny shreds, and stand. Your legs fight back, staggering a few steps against the numbness that has built up in the past however long you've been sitting there. With a shaky breath, you begin to walk back down the hallway.

You head to Meredith's after all.

--

Weeks pass.

You catch the tail end of this conversation. It's one you're guessing you weren't intended to hear.

"At about six-thirty," Callie answers Derek's apparent question. He nods, scribbling something in the unconscious patient's chart. Callie continues, working on the patient's leg. "She wouldn't let him take her to the airport, she left by herself."

"And how do you know this?" Derek asks, smirking as if he already knows the answer. Callie pulls her mouth to the side and raises her eyebrows.

"I was watching through the peephole," she tells him, somewhat begrudgingly. "Well, it was me _and_ Arizona, not Yang, she was utterly disinterested, but I did most of the watching. They hugged. And it wasn't a weird hug, it was a real one. Kind of sad, actually. Then she turned and left, wheeling her suitcase behind her." She makes the hand gesture and everything.

Derek lets it sink in, blue eyes soft and melancholy. Finally, he nods again. "Thanks, Callie. I was going to ask him myself, but…" His voice trails off and he sighs, scratching at the back of his neck.

Callie shrugs, digging her heels into the ground and rolling backwards on the stool. "I don't know," she comments. "He seemed, I don't know, okay? He just looked down the hall for a few minutes. Total blank stare. Then he went back into his apartment."

"Hm." Derek squints thoughtfully.

"Yeah," she agrees. "Weirdest year ever, right?"

"Oh, completely," he says with the slight buoyancy of a laugh. Callie has to snicker too.

"It's just surreal, you know? Sloan throws our entire apartment setup into chaos, and then she's just…gone."

This causes three simultaneous occurrences: you let out this horrid, strangled squeak, a noise never before made by a human being; your hand releases involuntarily, causing you to drop the packet of this patient's x-rays, and a few of them slide out and _everywhere_ across the floor; and you bang your head against the doorframe, which you ducked behind when you heard what they were talking about, so hard that you see stars.

Aggravation and tension evaporates from the silence that ensues in the exam room. You cringe and whimper, gingerly touching the lump that's forming on the back of your head.

Callie speaks, strained evenness permeating her voice.

"Grey, get in here."

You go.

--

Callie's right, it really must be surreal. You say "must be" because…well, you have no way of knowing for sure (the whole being removed from the situation thing and all).

You can still imagine, though.

It's hard to do. You close your eyes, picturing Mark's apartment, steeling yourself against the surge of nausea that comes with it. You picture how it looked when you left and how it must look now. MTV not dominating the flat screen. No cell phone charger perpetually plugged into the wall by the couch, the cord stretched over to its arm, perfect for tripping over in the dark. No half-eaten bowls of cereal cluttering the kitchen sink when there's a fully-functional dishwasher _right there_. The bathroom counter would actually be clear and usable without Sloan's curling iron and various makeup products spread over the entire surface.

These snippets, pieces of the puzzle, melt together into one big picture: Mark standing in the middle of the apartment – the very quiet, very empty, dimly-lit apartment – arms hanging limply at his sides, looking around, thinking _what now_? No daughter. No grandson. Just him. Standing there. Alone.

That's what makes you wish you hadn't imagined anything in the first place.

--

But he's _fine_.

And it's quite possibly the most mind-boggling thing ever.

You were expecting brooding. You were expecting down-turned eyes, a furrowed brow, and an upper lip trying desperately to curl. You were expecting a short fuse, expecting him to take the first person who crossed him to the ground.

But while you're sneaking around the hospital against your better judgment, peeking at him from behind corners and computers, there's nothing out of the ordinary. There's nothing in his body language, the little nuances of his mannerisms that you'd become attuned to, that indicates any excessive levels of emotional crisis.

Maybe he wasn't hiding any pain at all after the baby was born. You can't hide what's not there.

Maybe you don't know him as well as you once did.

Maybe you don't know him at all.

He performs amazing surgeries successfully and coolly. He talks to Derek (their argument after your breakup was strangely less harsh than when Derek found out you were seeing him), cross-armed, smiling, both laughing heartily. He drinks coffee. He eats lunch with Callie and Arizona. He waves goodbye to them as he leaves that evening, car keys in his hand, headed across the parking lot.

You watch from a safe distance, mouth hanging open.

What is _happening_?

It only gets stranger as time goes by. Old rumors start to flare up again, whispers of him hitting on nurses or slipping them into on-call rooms. It really shouldn't make you sick.

But the very pinnacle of all-encompassing confusion comes later, from out of nowhere.

One morning, you step off of the elevator and start towards the locker room. You're tired and your nose has been running and that combined with everything else just makes life crap. It's cold and rainy outside. Your freezing fingers steal warmth from the cup of coffee in your fist.

And you see Mark coming down the hallway, hands in the pockets of his lab coat, headed straight for you. Swallowing hard, you get as close to the wall as you can; your left shoulder almost skims it. He doesn't change his course. He isn't headed for _you_ after all. It's a small victory.

But right when you're about to cross paths with him, meet in the middle, it happens. Suddenly, everything is slow-motion and high-definition. You're aware of your breathing, and it's fast, just like your heart rate. His eyes are there. You're aware of them too. The background noise, the chatter and the phones and the shuffle of people, fades out, giving way to a distorted version of your heartbeat. Mark's gaze shifts to his right, to _you_.

Clear blue irises lock with yours, and you might as well have just walked into a brick wall because you're stopped in your tracks. Pinpricks spread from your cheeks and over the rest of your body, tiny white-hot explosions just below your skin. Breathing ceases. You forget about the coffee for a split second and your hand relaxes, but you react quickly enough to keep from dropping it – only a bit sloshes out and onto your clothes.

The world still moves sluggishly, and his eyes are still on yours. Rendered motionless, dizzy and tachycardic, your head turns to keep the contact as he moves past you, and you can't imagine what your face must look like. His head turns too.

Then, straight-faced, a slight inclination of his handsome chin. A nod of recognition. It's fleeting and, if you would have blinked, you would have missed it. He turns and continues on his way.

And you? You're not entirely sure whether or not anything exists.

That relatively insignificant, silent nod was the first semblance of personal acknowledgement he's given you since his attempt to hit on blonde-you (and, of course, the tirade that followed), outside of barking orders as your attending.

You take four unsteady steps and make a sharp turn into the ladies room, feeling like you're going to vomit. You don't. But the intent is definitely there.

So you lean over one of the sinks, gripping the sides, leaning heavily on it. Breathing slowly, in and out. Trying to calm your heartbeat. Waiting for the dull echo in your ears to subside. Your body quakes like a bowl of Jell-O.

You hate him. And that should be great. But, it's not. Instead, that hate mixes with all of those other feelings you're unwilling to name, creating this searing feeling that throbs so powerfully you might pass out.

You glance up, at the mirror. There's a streak running straight through your pale face, dividing it into two symmetrical sides. The lopsided ponytail, made without any effort to muster. Wide, red-rimmed eyes with faded purple circles beneath. A lower lip that trembles despite everything you're doing to make it stop.

And it all makes sense. Understanding flows, carried on an intense wave of nausea. The blonde hair. The changes you've made. The not feeling like yourself.

He's himself. He's Mark Sloan. He's broken safely through to the other side.

He's come through everything, smiling, completely unscathed. You're hiding in a bathroom.

He's the person he was before Sloan. He's the person he was before _you_.

And you can try as hard as you can, but you can't go back to who you were before him. If this right here is any indication, you don't remember who that was.

You don't remember how to be you anymore.

This whole photographic memory thing might be bullshit after all.

--

When he isn't at work a few days later, and whispers of him taking an impromptu trip to Los Angeles reach your ears, you lose it. It's awfully hard to stay sane when an image of Addison on top of him, completely naked, kissing him, invades your mind every time you close your eyes. You stagger through the day, avoiding the gaze of everyone else who knows, hating how you have to smile and function.

You need to get away. You need someone too, just to spite him and everything he's done to you. Alex won't do, and neither will anybody else at this hospital. It needs to be someone who's not connected to any of this, someone who doesn't know why you're like this in specific, vivid detail.

That night, you walk to the bar down the street from your apartment building. It's not Joe's and that's perfect. You walk in and sit down, feeling a few sets of eyes focus on you, but not in the way you've grown used to. Admiration, not pity, not judgment, and not that mixture of the two (which is the worst of all of them).

An owner of one of those gazes moves from his barstool to the empty one next to you. He smiles, a crooked little grin. Not malicious. Just an attempt at being cool. Little does he know that you're not looking for cool right now – you're just looking for somebody who doesn't know you, Mark Sloan, or Addison Montgomery. And when it comes to that simple criterion, maybe he'll do.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

You accept.

In the two hours it takes for you to get drunk together, you learn a few things about this guy. His name is Mitch. He's twenty-three. His eyes are the warm color your half-inebriated mind equated to that of maple syrup. And he doesn't work at Seattle Grace Mercy West.

That's good enough for you.

It's about midnight when both of you are laughing at absolutely nothing and his hand is on your knee and it's time. You throw back a final shot of whatever it is you've been drinking (Mitch looks impressed).

"Let's get out of here," you say, and the words feel strange and awkward coming from your mouth, but it's what you have to do.

"If you want," he replies coolly, but you can see he's fighting back a goofy grin.

The two of you stagger over the sidewalk, still laughing obnoxiously. You hold his wrist and pull him behind you, cutting through the chilly night air and into your building. When you reach your door, it takes you a few tries to unlock the door. Alex isn't home. This is a good thing.

You lead Mitch inside, and then run into Alex's bedroom. You grab one of his ties – the same one he used the last time – and wrap it securely around the outside doorknob. You stare at it for a few seconds. It's utterly unreal. Everything is happening so quickly, and you feel like this is some kind of incomplete story that needs filling in. But there's nothing else you can put into it, no kind of ink to inject and detail it with. There's just twenty-three year-old, pancake-topping-eyed, non-hospital Mitch. And you, drunk. And all of the thoughts of Los Angeles you're looking to wipe away. Nothing about this is thought out, but you're not concerning yourself with thinking. All it ever serves to do is get in the way.

You take Mitch into your bedroom.

This isn't meant to be pretty. It's not meant to be healthy, either.

This is saying _look what you've done to me_. This is screaming _I exist_.

But Mitch kisses you too hard, too sloppily. The sex isn't intense like Mark, or laid back like Alex. He doesn't know what angles drive you crazy like Mark did, and he's not a fast learner like Alex is. It's a rhythm you can't conform to or change yourself to make fit. You're too conscious of the condom separating you from him. It doesn't take long for you to realize that you don't want this; it doesn't take long for you to wonder what in the hell you were looking to achieve. Because this isn't something you thought you would ever do. It's not healing, it's only making everything worse and you want this man to be gone already.

So you fake an orgasm and wait very impatiently for him to be done. He's still inside of you when he asks, breathlessly, "Do you want me to stay for a while longer, or should I leave?"

You don't have to think twice.

When he's gone, you curl into a ball, legs to chest, chin to knees, feeling awful. Guilt. Guilt is making a grand feast of your insides. You're full of guilt, even though there's absolutely no reason for it. Except, there is. And that's just the most underhanded, fantastic reminder of the century of how he's fucking Addison in LA, not a care in the world, while you just had to fake an orgasm to get a guy to leave because you almost started crying while you were in bed with him.

It's gone from _look what you've done to me_ to _look what I've done_.

How was this easier back then, that first time? With Alex?

That's the unanswerable question that keeps you occupied until, somehow, you're asleep.

--

When you wake up, you finally understand what Mark meant that night so long ago.

You avoid mirrors.

--

You're sitting on the couch, staring dejectedly at the wall, when Alex comes through the door. He's wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. Maybe he stayed at Meredith's. Or maybe he did the same thing as you and found someone else to stay with. You don't want to know.

He nods at you and raises his eyebrows. "Morning," he says, heading for the kitchen.

"Mmhm," is your reply, a slight hum in the back of your throat, because it's the best you can do. He opens the fridge, his back towards you. He grabs the milk, drinking a mouthful straight from the carton. Under normal circumstances, you would have playfully scolded him for it. Not now, though. Not when you feel like you're going to start bawling should your vocal cords be provoked.

"So, I guess you had some company last night." You can hear the corners of his mouth turning upwards in a twisted smirk. It changes the inflection of his voice. "Enjoy yourself?" He's taunting you in that way he always does. But, even though it's mostly good-natured, it makes your throat swell. You take a deep, shaky breath, closing your eyes.

He looks over his shoulder when you don't answer, and he quirks an eyebrow when he sees how distraught you are. He replaces the milk. "Hey." He leans against the fridge, crossing his arms over his chest. "Are you okay?"

It's the phrase he's been using towards you a lot lately.

Your prolonged silence is enough of an answer. He walks over, standing in front of you. You avoid eye contact, focusing on a deep, ugly scratch in the hardwood. The people who moved out must have done it. "Look," he says, holding back an exasperated sigh (you hear it anyway), "you can't do this. You're not allowed to feel like crap. Because that makes other people who do that kind of stuff feel like crap too." You glance up at him, once and quickly. His voice is stern, arms akimbo. But his eyes don't match. There's this softness in them, not a lot but positively there. "Beating yourself up about it is only gonna make if feel worse. You had a one-night stand. You had sex with someone. Embrace it."

You wish it was that easy. You wish you could just reach inside of yourself and claw out all of the stuff that is making you hurt. But you can't. So you draw in another trembling breath and bite your lip so hard you might draw blood, hoping it'll keep you from crying in front of Alex.

He sits beside you, leaning far over, elbows resting on his knees. He studies you intently and you look away, as far into your peripheral vision as you can. "He didn't hurt you, did he?" His voice is much graver now.

Mitch? No. You did this to yourself. But Alex wasn't specific with his "he." Still, you shake your head.

"Shit, Grey," he says after a moment's pause, narrowing his eyes at you, as concerned as he can get anymore. He's been here too, you remember. It helps, in some perverse way. He gently tugs on the hair at the nape of your neck that had escaped from your ponytail. "You don't get this sad after we fuck, do you?"

You don't know why you react like this. You're smiling and shrugging but there are tears streaming down your cheeks and you're doing something nondescript with your head, something between a shake and a nod. It feels amazing to let the tears come but you wish they weren't there in the first place. You sniff heavily and wipe your eyes with your palms, barely containing yourself, dangerously to blubbering sobs.

You let Alex squeeze your shoulder for a few seconds before you slink away to fall apart in private.

--

At work, you're paranoid. Every day, you're ready (actually, you're not ready at all) to hear that he's never coming back. He's opening up a new hotshot practice in LA and he's going to perform cosmetic surgery on all kinds of celebrities and he's going to get his own reality TV show, called something awful like _Finishing Touches_ or _If It's Not Perfect_. He's going to marry Addison and they're going to buy a dog and take it for long walks on the beach at sunset, holding hands, laughing as it scampers playfully into the foamy surf.

It's probably a very bad sign that this is the nightmare you keep jolting awake from.

On the third morning, though, he's back. He's standing by the nurses' station, coffee in hand, making genial conversation with Doctor Hunt. His smile, always perfectly white, stands out even more than usual over his bronzed skin. There's a light of pink right across the bridge of his nose and cheeks, a charming sunburn.

He looks great. _So_ great, in fact, that you have to stop yourself twice from wondering if he's that tan all over.

You decide to look at yourself. Comparatively.

Your hair is a little longer. That's not a bad thing. You're still pale, but you've grown used to that.

You've lost weight. Not enough to be dangerous by any stretch of the imagination, and not by deliberate starvation or self-deprivation. You still eat, and if you had to prove it to somebody, you could. You did the whole face-stuffing thing after Mark, before the blonde. Apparently, it eventually plateaus and then tapers until you're eating less than normal. Who knew? You've never stuck to it for so long.

Your pants are only a little bit loose in the waist. Somebody who didn't know you would have no idea. But it's enough for Meredith to notice when she looks at you. It's enough for Alex to notice when his hand runs over a hip bone that's just a bit more prominent than usual. But they know that you're eating, they've both seen you. You don't mention it, and neither do they.

Sometimes, though, you wonder if Mark's noticed.


	3. Chapter 3

_Better than me, and I know_

_You are calm and symmetry and I'm an empty hole_

--

Mark's façade lasts exactly one week longer.

It crumbles in the worst possible place: the OR.

You're in the gallery, because you were almost magnetically drawn here. So you sit in the back corner, trying to make yourself as small as possible. April Kepner is next to you and she won't shut up. You're about an inch and a half away from punching her in the face. Mark hasn't looked up here, though. That's good. Because, really, this is bordering on complete psycho-stalker. What excuse do you have for being here? Since when does a burn case constitute a must-see surgery? Watching Mark and Reed place skin grafts and intensive healing dressings on this patient's body shouldn't make anyone want to sit and stare for a few hours.

Well, it _is_ a pretty serious case, you guess. The patient has second and third degree burns over sixty percent of her body, from her legs to her torso. Just think of all the nerve damage! _Yeah_. That's why you're watching. Nerve damage. Maybe he'll have to call Shepherd, even though this isn't technically a neuro case (stranger things have happened). But then maybe you'll have to go too, and that wouldn't be the best thing ever.

Just in case that would happen, though, you mentally review everything you know about this patient. She was brought in hours ago in bad condition. She was at a big blowout party at a friend's cabin, and she must have had one beer too many because she fell prone into the raging campfire, breaking her wrist when she tried to brace herself.

Nineteen years old. Pretty girl. You saw blonde hair when she was coming out of the ambulance.

Wait. There's something about this. A prickly sensation overcomes the back of your neck. A red flag pops up in your mind.

Blonde. Teen. Badly hurt.

_Oh_.

It's probably that thought, _your_ thought, which trips the alarm, sending the heart monitor into spasms. Great. Something _else_ you've done to mess up his life. You shrink into your chair, attempting to completely pass through the plastic, squeeze through one of the holes in the back. April leans forward in hers, finally quiet, watching with nervous eyes as the action unfolds below.

Or, doesn't unfold?

You see the occupants of the OR scurrying around, or looking around, or doing _something_. That's normal. The objects in motion almost hide the one that's not. But they can't hide it from you, because the only person not going through with emergency procedure is the only person you're watching.

Mark stands there, frozen, staring at the patient's face. His eyes aren't bright, they're stony, and it might be the scariest thing you've ever seen. Your breathing is becoming erratic, and it looks like he's not breathing at all, and it's like all of the breaths he should be taking are coming to you instead. She's been under too much stress. They're losing her. He has to do something. He has to _move_!

You want to stand up. You want to wave your arms. You want to pound your fists against the windows. You want to scream his name into the intercom until your throat bleeds. You want to set yourself on fire, right there in the gallery. Anything to penetrate the fog, to permeate all of his fears about his own pretty blonde teenage daughter. Anything to avert the agony that will come if this girl dies on his operating table.

But when you try, you find that you can't move either. Your muscles are all bunched up, and no matter how hard you strain, you can't make them obey. You're dizzy. He's still not doing anything.

And in the OR, it looks like Reed has _no_ idea what to do. Her big, frightened eyes search the gallery, frantic above her mask. They lock with yours, and her eyebrows immediately shoot upward, a plea for help, and you try to psychically tell her that you have no idea what to do either. You can only bite your lip and cringe because there's the flatline. This won't be good.

"_Doctor Sloan!_" a tinny version of Reed's voice explodes through the intercom, bold and gripping despite her fear. She repeats herself twice, in rapid succession. Finally, he snaps back into life, and you almost black out. His expression – eyes wide, like he's just realized what he's done – is one you wish you could burn from your mind. His hands shake slightly as he takes the paddles being pushed into him.

The patient survives. Barely. But she survives.

Against all that logic and whatever part of you wants to preserve the mental health you have left dictate you should do (_leave it alone_ is on the top of both lists), you creep by the OR hallway after they wheel the girl to the ICU. Mark is in there alone; he's leaning against the wall, the heels of his palms pressed to his forehead, taking deep breaths, eyes shut tight.

You tear away before he can open them and catch you.

--

Earlier that morning, you made plans to go to Joe's with Alex after work. You're in the locker room when you receive his message. Surgery with Arizona. Go ahead without him. He'll meet you there a little later. Alone is not exactly how you want to be want right now, but the promise of alcohol manages to override that. Off you go, wishing you could pre-order a few shots. It's not like you do it often, and besides, your nerves are just a little shot.

It feels odd walking into the Emerald City Bar without anyone beside you. Meredith and Derek are at a dinner party, where he's performing important chiefly diplomat duties, and you have no idea where Cristina is. You would have sat with Jackson or Reed, but it doesn't look like they're here either. It's just you, a loner in the dim lights and soft rumble of a thousand different conversations. Which is both disconcerting and disheartening, you guess. You don't want to be the unfortunate-looking one drinking by yourself until Alex gets here.

But realizing you're alone is nowhere near as disconcerting and disheartening as taking a few steps toward the bar, looking up, and realizing that you're _not_.

Your airway constricts spastically and your head swims, because you recognize the back of that jacket, those broad shoulders, and that wiry hair. You remember being _right there_ and reciting the first sixteen elements of the periodic table to him. You could have kept going. Maybe if you had, you would have still been sitting there with him.

Your brain says _run away_ but your legs say _walk to_, and as much as your brain whines like a little kid, your body tunes it out. See, _this_ is the problem. Something's wrong with your neurotransmitters or synapses. You really should get this checked out pretty soon.

At least your legs have the good sense not to go directly to him, where your mouth would have opened of its own accord, and if you didn't end up saying something idiotic, you would have started drooling or bawling or something and oh, how wonderful that would be. Instead, they carry you to a vacant barstool at a safe proximity from him – three empty spaces separate you and Mark. It feels like you're chasing danger, testing the delicate balance of nature.

Joe is standing in front of you almost as soon as you sit down. "Hey Lexie," he says, smiling.

"Hi," you reply, successfully not squeaking, smiling in return even though it feels strained.

"What can I get you?"

Easy one. You're glad he's asking questions you can answer automatically. "A shot and a beer, please."

"Coming right up." He nods and turns, grabbing the correct glasses and bottles to fill your order. While he's getting your drinks ready, you steal a quick glance to the left, at Mark. He's alone, too, silent, brooding, hunched over. He's staring into a glass of what you're sure is scotch, and he's slowly rotating it in the curve between his thumb and index finger. His eyes give you a chill of a different kind than earlier, in the OR; they're not stony, they're just dark, and a bit cloudy. His jaw is firmly set, eyebrows angled downward and together. He hasn't paid you any mind – positive, negative, or indifferent.

Joe finishes pouring your drinks and almost catches you looking at Mark. You thank him, again with the forced smile, and, after he heads to another customer, take the shot.

And next comes the part you didn't bargain for.

You're there for about thirty-five seconds before you start to squirm. Your idle hands are a threat, so you pull out your phone and end up checking your text messages six times in two minutes. The world clock application shows you the time in various major international cities. Then you check your inbox again.

Those barstools between you and him remain empty despite the growing headcount in the place.

Three times you feel his eyes on you. Three times you glance back at him and his eyes are on his drink.

He doesn't need to make eye contact to drive you crazy anyway. You're too acutely aware of the man three barstools away from you, a distance that at one point would have seemed absurd. You can feel him blinking, and every time he does, it skirts the line of overstimulation: a wave of warmth punctuated with the vicious bite of a needle. You can feel him breathing, slowly in and out, the rhythm of accepting defeat, every expansion and contraction of his lungs, and his cells respond and keep him alive until all of your cells are _freaking out_, screaming in an agonizing desire to move closer, just a bit closer. This feeling is not unfamiliar, but once upon a time, you knew the cure: touching him, burying yourself in his arms until the contact subdued the overdrive. You're tense and an uncomfortable sort of giddy; you hold yourself in check until the tendons in your forearms pop out.

And _dammit_, those seats are still open. Nobody will sit there and maybe block some of what's taking its precious time incapacitating you. Maybe everyone can sense the tension flowing between the two of you. Well, maybe not _between_, it's mainly on your end. He just sits and drinks, blinks and breathes, and he obviously doesn't know what it's doing to you. Your heart hammers. Every time you move your eyes, you're rewarded with a nasty headrush. It's an overload. You're dizzy and you feel pale.

You must look just like you feel, because when Joe gets back to you, his eyebrows raise in confused concern. "You alright?" he asks, lowering his voice, like he's trying to make this a private matter. _Ha_, what a joke.

"Yeah," you answer after a second of preparation, even though you can feel Mark listening to your conversation, just curious enough to pull him out of the place he's in. "I'm just really tired. Long day." Lamest excuse ever, but it works. "I think I'm going to leave." You pull out a few dollar bills with trembling hands and place them on the slightly sticky bar top. "When Alex comes in, could you please tell him that I went home?"

Joe nods and you carefully stand, considering it a victory when you don't immediately topple over.

As you leave, you feel no eyes following you, no gaze burning its way into your back. You can't decide if that's great or awful.

--

The next two times you're at Joe's, and Mark is sitting at the bar, Alex is with you. And you hold his hand on your thigh, hidden under the bar – not for Mark to see, just to keep yourself anchored to something tangible, something other than what Mark makes you feel. Then, the third time, Mark isn't there at all, and you're there with Meredith, Cristina, and Alex, and you find yourself smiling a lot more that night than you have in a while.

The fourth time, it changes.

Mark is there. Sitting, drinking, breathing, brooding. Alex is as sick as a dog with some kind of flu, so he's at home. Meredith is on call; Cristina is fighting with Owen somewhere other than here. You _were _sitting with Jackson, but he was paged not too long ago. Once again, it's just Mark and you, too much space between, existing side-by-side rather than together.

But it's slightly less bad tonight. You've managed to cushion the blow with a few drinks – not enough to be drunk, but the buzz is a welcome helper. You planned on staying until last call (it's not all the time you're _off_ the next day), and he's not going to change that. Still, you move a little more cautiously than usual, nursing your beer and reminding yourself every so often not to look at him, lest you nearly hyperventilate again.

And you do a pretty good job, because before you know it, the lights are flickering on and off. Last call. You made it. Hey, maybe this is a good sign. Maybe this means you're finally cured.

That thought lasts about five seconds, max, because that's how long it takes before you zero in on a conversation between Joe and Mark. It's hushed, but you're more than inclined to hear it. So much for cured.

"Let me call you a cab," Joe says, looking solemnly into Mark's eyes, leaning with his elbows on the bar. Mark shakes his head.

"No, I'm fine to drive," he tells him with a wave of his hand. Something grabs your heart and squeezes.

He's drunk. You can tell; you've seen it before. He doesn't get obnoxious. It's only small changes. The way his irises seem to darken a shade, not quite focused but not overtly unfocused; how his voice lowers and gets just a little gravelly; he blinks and touches his face more often; he's…he's drunk. And he wants to get into a car and drive. And that's terrifying.

"Really." Joe's voice is more assertive, and he straightens, drawing himself to his full height. "I can't let you drive."

And that serves to do nothing but aggravate Mark. His mouth twitches. "I already told you, I'm fine."

Again, you picture him in the car, and the fear tugs at you. It makes something happen. A rumble in your chest, deep in your lungs. It grows and expands, wind rushing past your vocal cords, making them vibrate. Your mouth moves with them, tongue and lips and teeth forming words you never told them to. "I'll take him," you hear yourself say, immediately followed in your head by _what_ and then _oh, shit_. It's the closest thing to an out-of-body experience you've ever had – your voice is a mile away. You gently touch your lips, aware of how huge your eyes are.

And they both look at you, the comic slow-turn to reveal bewildered faces, like what happens in cartoons. It would have been funny if…if you hadn't just offered to take Mark Sloan home. That just makes it unfortunate.

"You will?" Joe asks, trying as hard as possible to keep his voice in a range of controlled neutrality. Well, _shit_. No matter what you say, you're fucked. Might as well stick to it, even though you might officially have to get "Biggest Idiot Ever" tattooed on your forehead for it.

"Yeah," you stammer, ignoring fight-or-flight, trying not to squeak. "I'm good to drive and I'm off tomorrow. So I'll…I'll take him."

And then Mark _sneers_, one of the bitterest, most malicious expressions you've ever seen him wear, and it's actually physically painful. "Don't you need to be heading home to Karev?" he asks you, and it's almost surreal that words coming from his mouth are directed towards you. You're struck temporarily dumb, mouth hanging open, trying to let it process.

In your silence, he lets out a single barking laugh with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "Go home, Grey." No Little in front of it. Fond nicknames are long gone. His smirk is sharp, voice dark. "Go home to your boyfriend."

The words are like a bucket of icy water being thrown on you; they numb you and hurt you at the same time. Your face is on fire and your stomach feels like it's twisted around itself. His condescending gaze is relentless and you know you should probably just leave now.

Maybe if you give him a choice, he won't pick you, and you can leave.

"It's either me or a cab," you say softly, shrugging, avoiding his eyes, lacking the assertiveness you had hoped for (but knew would never come out).

He raises a single eyebrow. He's thinking, considering his options. Your heart threatens to climb up your throat. He won't pick you.

There's no way he will.

But then why is he standing up?

What- _no_. He's walking towards you. You've forgotten how to breathe. He picked you. _He picked you. _You might break out in hives. Your mouth feels like it's filled with gauze. You try to swallow but you're sure you'll gag and he's standing in front of you, smirking, arms crossed, and he might as well have just reached out and wrapped his hands around your throat.

His blue eyes gleam as he raises his eyebrows, impatient, begrudgingly. Your prolonged, dumbstruck pause has already begun to irritate him. "Are we leaving or what?"

A cascade of "um's" and "uh's" stream from your mouth – eloquent, lovely – before you settle for a simple "yeah." Joe watches all of this with trepid eyes, like he's watching a train wreck about to happen and has the power to stop it. But Mark has already started moving, headed for the door. He casts a glance at you over his shoulder.

When you try to walk, you trip over yourself. Twice.

In the car, it's silent. You focus on the road, keeping your eyes ahead of you, seeing streaks of headlights as cars whiz past in the opposite direction. You breathe. In and out. You don't think about the passenger seat, or about the presence in it. He's breathing too, and your body prickles every time he exhales. Everything is strange in this mad world where Mark Sloan is in your car. Your knuckles are white as you grip the steering wheel for all you're worth.

You're filled with the sensation that this isn't real. You're dreaming. Any second now, you'll wake up.

His voice breaks the silence, and your senses bind you to your body, effectively killing that notion. "Karev won't be happy," he says without looking at you, bitterly teasing, "when he finds out I was in the car with you." Then, he laughs again, because it's _so funny_.

You say nothing. Instead, you sigh, bite the inside of your cheek, and put on your turn signal.

Another mile of silence, even though everything about you except your voice is screaming.

You hit a red light, and he speaks again.

"Really, you should go back to him." He looks at you and raises his eyebrows, pursing his lips. Rage swells in your chest, and you clench your jaw against it. Your stomach rolls. "Dump me on the side of the road and to go your boyfriend. Wasn't too hard for you the first time." He shrugs nonchalantly before returning his eyes to the road. But his words rip and tear, clawing open some of the wounds that never healed in the first place. You lose your composure for just a second.

"He's not my boyfriend," you tell him, your voice surprisingly sure, surprisingly defiant. Then, your heart skips a beat.

This happened before, a world ago.

Luckily, you don't have much time to dwell on that, because you're pulling into a parking spot in front of his apartment building.

The night air is very chilly as you walk to the main entrance. You shiver and he shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. Once upon a time, you might have cuddled up to him, sharing heat until you got inside. Now, there's at least two and a half feet of space between you and him, at least. But your curves protest this, wanting nothing more than to be pressed to his side, where they remember fitting perfectly.

You'll just have to settle for shivering.

You keep your eyes on the floor and just focus on walking, one step after another. The hiccup of an elevator ride provides a definite challenge, but you survive. The two of you step out onto the fifth floor, and you're ready to make sure he gets to his door without passing out and then tell your legs to _run_ so fast your upper half won't be able to catch up. Because this? This was a bad idea. Because now you're remembering everything about this hallway – the sound of footsteps echoing on its floor. Each one hits you like a punch to the gut.

The toe of Mark's shoe drags on the ground and he stumbles. "Shit," he slurs, losing his composure, reaching out blindly for anything to catch himself on. And, of course, it's your shoulder. His hand burns your skin through your clothes as he grabs on, and it's so good that you want to grab it and hold it there forever. He pushes against you, steadying his own momentum, sending you off-balance. You stagger for a few steps and he must somehow feel bad enough to help you, sliding his arm around to your other shoulder, steadying you as well.

You gasp and try not to let yourself shudder against him. The familiar warmth of his arm around your shoulders tugs at your gut. His scent assaults your nose: leather, masculinity, and laundry detergent, with this new underscore of cigarette smoke. Your system is about to overload with everything, and you just pray that Callie, Arizona, Cristina, or any combination thereof won't be outside of their apartment and see Mark basically hanging on you.

His body is a literal representation of what you've been dragging around for months. It's way too appropriate for your taste.

That door with 501 on it has never looked better. He lets go of you, you resist the urge to cling to him, and pulls out his keys. Unlocking his door and opening it, he steps inside. Then, he does and about-face and stares at you. You're frozen.

"Coming in?" he asks, and you can't tell for the life of you whether or not he's serious. You forget how to say "yes" or "no." Well, really, you forget how to articulate anything at all. You just open and close your mouth and point back in the direction you came.

He grins, narrowing his eyes. Leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms, he teases, "_Scared_?"

Yes. Absolutely terrified. Of what? You're not entirely sure.

To step across that threshold might be the worse decision ever. But you've made a few in the past. Two parts of you stretch in opposite directions. One begs you to get the hell out of there, scurry back home, and pretend this never happened. The other wants nothing more than to go into Mark's apartment. They struggle and snarl, scratch and bite at one another until the thread connecting snaps. The one with more weight is the winner.

You take a deep breath and step through the door of apartment 501.

Mark's eyes are on you as you look around the darkened space, hands shaking, overcome by all of the acute familiarity. The memories are too vivid, too sharp, and they make your head ache. He kissed you on that couch. You made him dinner in that kitchen. In that bedroom…

Everything is the way you imagined it a while ago.

Everything besides that beautiful crib in the middle of the living room. It doesn't match, doesn't blend in with anything else. It sticks out, a stark, foreign imperfection. A scar on a beautiful face. Eyesore, you think, and then immediately feel awful for it. Still, you stare at it, and it reminds you once again of how things can never go back.

He's beside you, then; his shoulder brushes yours, and your skin blazes. He follows your gaze, tracing the invisible line all the way to the crib. Biting your lip, you glance up at him, watching as his eyes gloss over, opaque, like he just remembered that he didn't want to see it. But he sees it there every day, constantly reminded, but not willing to remove it. And now _you've _seen it, and it kills him just a little bit. You see it run across his face, a twitch in his eye, clenched jaw, _fuck it all _restraint.

But he blinks, and all of that is gone, back to wherever it came from.

There's no sound for a minute, just your heartbeat in your ears. You can feel his through your skin, over and over, a rhythm you've heard before.

"Hey." You almost jump at the noise, even though it's neither sudden nor loud. His eyes scorch yours, intense, concentrated, looking at you (because that's still a big deal). "If Karev's not your boyfriend…"

And he's close to you, _too_ close, your bodies are touching chest-to-chest and you're trembling. His hand grazes your hip and you swallow hard. This shouldn't be happening. You shouldn't have done any of this. You should have listened to him and gone home, because this will do nothing but hurt ferociously. That shadow across half his face is beautiful.

He gently pushes you against the wall and you're too stunned to do anything about it. Your brain tells your arms to shove him off and your hands do press against his chest. But your biceps fail to cooperate – instead of tightening for that final burst of strength that will get him off of you, they go completely limp. You're helpless. Instinct betrays your conscience, overriding the _should do_ and instead jumping to _will do_.

He kisses you, holding you by the waist, trapping your body against the wall, and words like _conscience _and _no_ lose all meaning. His lips burn you from the inside out and he tastes like scotch, tastes like Mark, and everything comes rushing back, that year comes rushing back, and you grip his shoulders, digging in with your nails and kissing back like your life depends on it. This is you. This is what you remember doing, who you remember being. His mouth, open against yours, is the connection to the person you've lost along the way. The rapid flutter in your chest fills you and _this_ is what you've been missing. His hands sliding over your body. Your arms looping around his neck, drawing him closer. The curve of his smirk over your lips. You're vaguely aware of how awful this is for the both of you when his hips press against yours, but it's not in your power to make it stop. Not when his fingers are tangling in your hair like that.

When his lips tear away from yours, you take a breath and immediately start gasping, chest heaving, over and over, until you're dangerously close to passing out, and it's like you've been holding your breath for months. It's a fever breaking. He floods your senses; everything is him. His mouth is against your neck, and you melt against him and don't fucking _care_ what this will mean or how this will feel tomorrow. You just don't want him to stop. You never wanted him to stop.

This is not healthy or happy or wise or anything like that. It just _is_. And when he pulls your shirt over your head and his hands skim your bare skin, you realize that you're the same. Not healthy. Not happy. Not wise. You just _are_.

Eventually, you end up in his bed, both shedding your last bits of clothing in a heated frenzy of tangled limbs and lips. You don't remember how you got here. You're not in much of a state to comprehend specific details – you can sense movement, but not direction. You arch into him as he positions himself over you, your teeth clasped to his lower lip, the friction of skin on skin reminding you of the presence of your body. The presence of you, Lexie Grey. In this moment, you're not broken. You're just a person, giving in to the same desires as other people do.

And he must remember too, with the way he touches you, two fingers buried deep inside and the pad of his thumb circling your clit until you're bucking against his hand, moaning helplessly. His mouth on your breast is a burst of flame, so good you might not survive.

You gasp as he enters you, hard, full, and your toes curl and you writhe, but he makes a face; not quite disappointment, just confused anticlimax. Maybe you're not as tight as you were before, or maybe it's psychological, but it's gone by the time he begins thrusting. Your hips move in tandem with his, working on their own accord, and you don't have to force yourself to do anything, until he's so far inside of you that maybe he'll never find his way out.

When you move together, it's like a rush of everything, and you're moaning with his every thrust and he's pressing his forehead against yours. You're holding him tight, fingernails digging into and scratching at the pliant skin of his lower back, the lithe muscles there tightening and relaxing beneath your fingertips. Everything's electric and liquid, wispy and angry, and you bury your head in his neck. His palm drags from your shoulder to your hip, leaving a trail of tiny shocks. You're so close to him that you can feel everything, you can trace all of the tiny chemical reactions happening in his body, all of the build-ups and breakdowns that keep him going, and you wonder if he can feel the same in you.

Your nerves are glowing neon and it's just so _good_; you don't last long at all. You kiss him as you come, your cry stifled against his mouth, and it's like you just grabbed both ends of the world and pulled _hard_, tearing it straight down the middle.

(or maybe he's the one who did it)

--

But as soon as it's over, when you're separated and cold, that promised pain settles in. All of the exhilaration, all of the positive, everything you wanted and needed from whatever it was that just happened, gone. In its place? This empty kind of hurt, one that actually makes you shudder and curl up in a ball.

You lie there in his bed with him next to you, fast asleep, breathing in and out, and you wonder if he would be feeling this way too if he wasn't completely wasted. Which, well, that's another knife in your chest. He's drunk. You'd almost forgotten. You never thought this would be a reunion of any sort. But to know he wouldn't have bothered if he hadn't had way too much scotch?

This was an awful idea. You feel the loathing set in, heavy in your chest, and _this_ is another thing you don't do. This is pathetic. How did you get here? How did you hit the bottom?

You need to leave. To sneak away. Or else, you might just die right there.

Maybe he's so drunk he won't remember who he screwed tonight.

You don't want to acknowledge the pain that comes with that thought. Double-edged sword.

You slip out the door, leaving him alone, hoping he won't recognize the tearstains you left on his pillow or the imprint you left in his bed.

--

It's close to six o'clock in the morning when you creep back into your apartment. Alex is knocked out on the couch, some sports news anchor talking on mute on the television, ginger ale on the coffee table, puke bucket on the floor beside him.

It's very easy to creep past him and shut yourself in your room.

Hours later, he knocks on your door, asking tiredly if you're alright.

Imitating the grogginess in his voice, you answer. "I think you gave me your flu."


	4. Chapter 4

_My envy of all you own_

_I want to be a possession you dust and won't let go_

_Gentlest touch and sweetest sound_

_Something you'll run back in for when the house burns down_

--

Days pass. You say nothing to anyone. And, if he remembers, neither does he. You can't tell if he does or not. He looks at you more often. But maybe it's just because you're on his service for the first time in months.

The fact that you can't tell kills you. That and the secret-keeping. The pieces make up the whole: _I slept with Mark while he was drunk and I don't know if he remembers but I remember and it's killing me and I'm the most unfortunate person ever._ But even putting it into easily-understandable words can't describe the feeling, doesn't simplify the situation.

It's like there's a hole inside of you. You feel like you're losing something, something of substantial weight – it's leaking out, and you can feel it with every heartbeat. You had a taste of who you were before, a glimpse into the past. And now, it's not just forgetting who you were that hurts. It's _remembering _who you were and wanting more than anything to go back to it.

You stand in front of the mirror in your bedroom, in sweatpants and a sports bra, studying yourself from all angles. Searching for that hole. You run your hands over your skin, across your stomach, down your sides, with the hopes that you'll be able to find it and plug it up.

But there's nothing there that isn't supposed to be there. Just the sensation of your hands on your body. Which makes you think of _his_ hands on your body, which makes the invisible wound throb and scream in complaint. It's a new kind of hurt. You've run out of ways to describe it. It's not empty, it's not sharp, it's not burning, it's just…new. And it's the worst of them all.

When suddenly, your reflection isn't alone. Alex stands beside you, all flesh and gray boxer briefs, looking at your reflection instead of at you. He wears an expression that says he might think you've completely lost your marbles.

"What are you doing?" he asks, narrowing his eyes and finally looking directly at you instead of the glass.

You quirk an eyebrow at him, biting your lip. "Nothing," you answer, and it's partly true.

--

"_God, Lexie,_" Molly's voice flows through your phone's receiver, timidly incredulous, "_what's happened to you?_"

You almost hang up right there, whip your cell phone at the wall, and drive to Meredith's, because she's the sister who _really_ cares. And oh, _no_, you didn't just think that. Awesome, something else to feel utterly horrible about. If she could, Molly would be there for you too. To keep a bedroom free and gently touch your shoulder when you're looking particularly awful, not asking any questions.

So instead, you fake a smile into the mouthpiece, only because it makes your voice sound more genuine when you say, "Nothing. I'm fine. Tell Laura and Eric that I love them, okay?"

You're surprised at how convincing it is, really. Because you've finally acknowledged it. You're starting to come undone.

That night, Mark stepped on one of the strings of you (which had been hanging loose already, also because of him), trapping it with all his might between concrete and the sole of his shoe. And the farther away you go, the faster you try to get there, the more you unravel. Eventually there will be no structure to keep you upright and you'll just collapse.

--

Those little letters on the LCD screen are taunting you, chilling you, terrifying you. It's a simple message. Two words. No punctuation whatsoever, which somehow makes it even more intimidating.

_Come over_

The sender is a name that your phone hasn't displayed in a long, long time. It slips from your hand and hits the hardwood with a loud clatter. Alex tosses a quick glance your way, and then looks back at the television. Your heart is erratic as you delete the text message as quickly as your thumb will move.

He remembers.

You shouldn't go.

You won't go.

You almost don't go.

Almost.

It takes exactly two minutes for it to become too much to resist. You to stand up from the couch, announcing that you need to pick something up from work. Alex just smirks, looking like he's not buying it at all, and you're sure he's proud because he thinks you basically just got a booty call.

If only he knew.

The miles between your apartment and Mark's seem to stretch as you drive. Maybe you'll never get there. The road just might be trying to tell you to go back, it's hopeless.

But eventually you're standing in front of his door, constantly checking over your shoulder, ready to hit the deck at the sound of Callie's voice. Two knocks, quick and nervous. And then the door is open and he's standing there, in jeans and a white tee, all arched eyebrow and steeled jaw, and your heart sputters. For a second, you two are at an impasse – he studies you intently, silently, and you try not to shake under his gaze, holding eye contact as consistently as you can.

He scrutinizes your appearance, almost looking at you inside and out. Deadpan judgment, cold steel-blue stare. You chew on your lip. It feels raw within a matter of seconds. Finally, he steps aside, gives you passage, holding the door open before gripping the jamb and letting it follow your body as you step through.

For a long time, neither of you speak. He's sober, you can tell that much. His eyes are clear, and they connect with yours, no cloud, no wandering. Your heart twinges uncomfortably in the silence. A thousand questions jumble your brain, teasing your tongue. A million words to say. Zero ways to say them. Foreign feelings you can't express. And he's just staring at you, which isn't helping the situation very much at all. The crib is gone. You just glanced over there. He noticed, you think.

You finally come up with something to say, something with some semblance of adequacy. But your "what is this?" never makes it out of your mouth, the words swallowed by his kiss: sudden, fierce, heavy, forceful. Your head reels, arms moving automatically to where they feel comfortable.

This is just feeding something awful inside both of you. Some rift in your souls, some toxicity in your veins. But there's no pain right now, in this instant of twisting tongues and roving hands. There's just this.

This time, you don't make it to the bedroom. The sofa will do. Your chest heaves; his one hand is between your thighs and the other rests under the curve of your breast, fingers curled around your ribcage. "You're too thin," he breathes against your neck, and it's the first thing he's said to you since the other night. It's neither fond nor angry…it's just an austere statement of fact.

Right now, you don't feel like you're unraveling. On the contrary, you're being wrapped within yourself, feeling the silky-smooth sheet of yesterday gently graze your skin as his lips and palms do. And you think, how can something this wonderful possibly make you feel so awful later?

When it's time, he hooks one of your legs over his shoulder, wraps the other around his waist. You dig the heel of that one into his back, bringing him as close to you as possible.

There's sudden clarity in the fog of intense arousal. Time slows down for just a few seconds. You look up at him, your eyebrows knitting together in realization. Today's date flashes in your head, over and over. It's been exactly six months since you were standing outside of that nursery, gazing at that dark-haired newborn baby.

He pushes inside of you, then, and white-hot pinpricks make you lose the ability to think about anything for quite a while.

This time, though, you're absolutely _sure_ he'll remember.

--

So you'll just have to leave.

His hands are around your neck, and all he has to do is pick a time to squeeze.

But not if you get out of here. On particularly bad days, you seriously consider it. If you leave Seattle, you might never see him again. And there would be no opportunity for that indescribable pain. Maybe you'd even be able to replace it with something good.

And today is a _particularly_ particularly bad day.

"It didn't have to turn out like this," you say, forehead in your palms, swallowing the regret and shame and the awful corrosive feeling in your chest. You're sitting on Meredith's couch, and you glance up at her. Her figure, legs folded beneath her in the easy chair across from you, swims in your bleary vision. You haven't told her the whole story, nothing about those nights: only that you absolutely can't take it anymore and that he's killing you. But you don't have to tell her the whole story. That's the good thing about her. She'll love you all the same.

"It didn't have to turn out like this." You're well aware that you're repeating yourself, but Meredith doesn't seem to mind. She just sits and listens, with her head cocked to one side. There's a bottle of tequila on the coffee table between you, even though neither of you has touched it. If you drank it, you think you'd just vomit it back up everywhere as soon as it hit your stomach. It's more of a force of habit, just something Meredith's used to doing in these situations.

"I was thinking," you stammer, voice weakening as it crosses the lump in your throat, "I could leave. I could find another residency, and Derek could write me a letter of recommendation, and…and I just need to get out of here. I don't belong here anymore." If it hurts this much to be here, the pain must be trying to tell you something. To breathe his air, to have every corner remind you of him…

Your voice fails you.

Meredith just watches you for a few moments as you bite back tears and quickly wipe away the ones that do manage to escape. Then, she purses her lips, stands, and moves to sit beside you.

"You're not going anywhere," she tells you firmly, calmly, wrapping her arms around you and holding you tight. You feel yourself instinctively go limp, shuddering as all of your weight sinks into her. "You belong here, Lex. Look, I gave part of my liver for you. You're staying put."

And then both of you are laughing, and it's the first time you've _really_ laughed in a long time. You laugh and laugh until you're crying, an intense release of the unbearable pressure inside of you. You sob deeply and heavily against Meredith's neck, unashamed. Your tears stain her shirt and skin as she lets out a few gentle _shhh_s, hugging your shaking frame, pressing her face against your hair in something that isn't quite a kiss.

--

You don't leave.

--

One night, you're at home, and Alex is probably going to start complaining because you're taking too much time in the bathroom. But it's not your fault, exactly; your hair is long enough now that you actually have to bother with it. You daydream as you run your straightener through it, moving methodically from section to section, about how you could have averted all of this in the first place. How could you go back to those milliseconds and change something you did?

You could have grinned and bore it when Mark invited Sloan to move in and raise the baby with them.

That night at Meredith's, after you broke up with him, you could have skipped on the wine. You could have locked the door to what was then Alex's bedroom and not opened it, no matter how much he had knocked.

But the future still wouldn't have been how you wanted it to be.

You're just about finished with your hair when you hear Alex swear from the kitchen. "Shit. Lexie, I left my phone at the hospital, can I use yours?" he calls to you, obviously annoyed by the inconvenience.

"Yeah," you reply absentmindedly, finishing with the last section. "It's on the charger."

"Thanks."

In the time it takes you to turn off and unplug the flat iron, he's standing in the doorway, frowning, brow furrowed in anger. You look back at him, confused. With a quick, aggravated burst of air from his nose, he thrusts your phone at you. You juggle it between your hands, almost dropping it.

"You have a text message." His voice is sardonic, and he crosses his arms.

And you cringe. _Hard._ Visibly, even.

Because Alex must have innocently picked up your phone and saw this new, unopened text message. He must have seen that it's from Mark. You're not sure which is worse, the dread of having a text from him or the dread of having Alex be privy to it.

You say nothing, because what can you do? Lie? That would be a great plan.

"That _tool_?" Alex narrows his eyes incredulously, coming to a revelation. "Tell me it hasn't been him this entire time."

Once again, your silence is the only answer he needs. He scoffs and sneers in total disbelief, and you know he wants to call you an idiot, shake you by the shoulders, and say "have you completely forgotten what he did to you?"

But then, something else runs across his face, something else flashes in his hazel eyes. It's not heartbreak, not sadness over you, just a shift, a momentary loss in cool composure. Maybe he's thinking about how it would be to be like you. Another chance, no matter how miserable it made him. Maybe he's thinking about what he would choose.

It's a long moment while he sighs, running his palm all the way down his face. "Do what you want," he finally says, monotonous, shrugging. "Just…if he hurts you…" His voice trails off, giving way after a second to a humorless laugh. "Damn it, Grey, you weren't supposed to be as fucked up as the rest of us."

Then he's gone, into his bedroom, where he closes his door. You stand there in front of the mirror, lip caught pensively between your teeth as you regain your composure (or, at least, the little fragments you have left of it) and let go of something you've been clinging to for so long.

But there's still that message to open. This time, you don't even try to stop yourself.

_Come over, want to talk_

--

When you step through his door, arms crossed self-consciously, he asks you, "Do you want to talk now, or…?"

And you're shaking your head, violently, _no_, because you really don't want to talk at all. Because who knows what he's going to say? And you know what _you're_ going to say, and those words that will undoubtedly pour from your mouth will just complicate things exponentially.

He smirks, then, eyebrows drawn together. "So, after, then?" he offers jokingly, but his eyes don't light up, the way you used to love.

And you don't know who you're kidding with _used to_.

The sex is a bit forced (your teeth clash with his once when you kiss), but still an escape, and you try to make it last as long as possible. That is, until he starts talking again. His voice automatically grabs you and brings you back to the place where you're lying in his bed, inches apart from him, and your insides writhe as that hole appears again.

"I've been thinking," he's saying, and you can hear him weighing every word, sounding it out in his mind before it crosses his lips, because this is something he's not used to doing. But that all goes to shit when he blurts, "I want you to come back."

There's a lull in the universe. Absolute zero. Atoms stop vibrating. It's just you, frozen in space, suspended over the menacing cavern of time.

And then, it happens. The last of the string untangles. You collapse.

The first sob is unquestionably the worst. It grabs your lungs and tears them with brutal force, causing a dry, croaking gasp to escape from your throat, and it hurts so badly that you're sure you're going to faint, or worse. But you stay conscious long enough for it to happen again, and again, and again, until tears are flowing freely down your cheeks, tears of anger, tears of despair, tears of guilt for your own stupidity. And your brain and mouth make you talk anyway, despite the weeping and hiccups, until everything you say is so jumbled up that it needs a translator.

"No, you don't, you don't want me," you cough, and it's out in the open for the first time ever. Your pitch wavers almost as frantically as your breathing. "You don't want me anymore. You want Sloan, and Travis." It just slips out, you didn't meant to say the name, and you pray that he doesn't catch it. "I'll only be what you settle for. I'll only ever be second best." Another raw, shuddering, heaving sob, one that make your diaphragm ache. The words just keep coming, rapidly, recklessly. "And I can't do that. I can't be that person. Because every time you would say you love me, I would know there's someone else out there you'd rather be saying it to. So don't kid yourself, and don't say something like that to me, because…I mean, just look at me!"

You're in ruins. Tear-tracked cheeks and red eyes. Gasping breaths and shaking hands.

The weeping takes over, then, giving you a break and overriding all speech abilities. You're choking and hiccupping and suddenly Mark's strong arms are around you, but they feel like pillars of marble and they're crushing you and you can't breathe. You struggle against him, all elbows and palm-heels. When you finally wrench yourself free of his grip, jerking your wrist from his hand, you grab your things and leave, eyes shut tight so that you don't look back at him.

You don't know what would have happened to you if you had.

Walking out that door is just plain hard. When you step across the threshold, something inside of you tears at the seams, resulting in excruciating agony that makes your legs wobble. Because you want nothing more than to believe him, to walk back into that apartment for good, to maybe stop your soul from shrieking.

Again, you hate him, more than you ever have before. But the hate isn't the feeling that's destroying you. It's the other one pushing against it, a reaction resulting in incineration and annihilation.

--

The OR hallway is deserted. You're late to scrub in with Derek, and you haven't come up with a good excuse but you don't even care anymore.

As soon as your hand touches the door to the scrub room for OR 2, you hear his voice.

"Lexie."

It's the most uncomfortable hot and cold sensation, falling and flying at the same time. You tell yourself to ignore him and step into the scrub room. Go ahead. Do it. Now. Come on.

Fucking legs.

Mark stands a good six feet away from you, watching you cautiously. When you do turn around, your eyes are on your shoes, unwilling to meet his gaze.

When he realizes that you're not going to say anything, he does, and it's so reluctant that you almost want to look up. The words are clumsy (he's not used to this) and they don't sound right coming from his mouth.

"I don't sleep anymore. Well, at least, not when I'm supposed to. I'm usually able to pass out when I'm drunk, and sometimes I crash in my office for hours."

You pick at a string on the hemline of your scrub shirt.

"You get used to it," he says reluctantly, taking one step closer to you, testing the limits. "After a while, you get used to having everything you want being taken away from you. It doesn't really hit you for a while. But when it does, it hits you _hard_."

He's right. You remember crying in an elevator. You let your eyes flit up to his, once.

"Of course I want my family. I want them more than I've ever wanted anything." For some reason, you don't think his words are having the effect he wants them to, because really, it hurts. "But I can still want you, too. When I would think about it, when I would have those dreams, you'd be there too. You were there with us. And I tried like hell to make you go away, but I couldn't."

He's almost directly in front of you now, and you're looking at him, at the vulnerability that attacks your heart and holds your lungs hostage. "And, somehow, I knew it would turn out like this. I started with everything. You, Sloan, the baby…" He glances away for a moment, eyes sliding all the way to their corners. "Not anymore. But when it gets hard, I can pretend they're happy. I almost have myself convinced that they are. But I know you're not, and as much as I wish I didn't care, I do."

One hand is on the back of his neck, and he rubs his face with the other, squirming on the inside, working against everything telling him to keep this to himself.

"I've been stupid, alright?"

It hovers in the air forever, echoes in your ears, until the words finally sound like words.

And he's looking at you like he wants you to say something, trying to keep the hope in check, pushing it down so deep that it won't hurt him again.

But you can't think of a single thing to say. Your mind races, grabbing at anything, but it's all so random and inconsequential and nothing that could possibly be considered adequate.

So you turn into the scrub room instead.

As soon as the door shuts behind you, you feel like you're going to throw up absolutely everything inside of you, _everything,_ and it's the worst feeling ever and the best feeling ever all at the same time.

--

You never claimed to be perfect.

You don't know what you ever did to make him put you on that pedestal, untouchable, pristine, incapable of making any sort of mistake, unable to have a momentary lapse in logic.

Maybe you were more perfect then than you are now.

But you're sick of that whole idea. You're tired of the notion that just because something's not perfect, it's not good for anything. Something can be _wonderful_, even, without being anywhere near perfect. You're tired of your heart being chafed, tired of it not fitting in your chest. But most of all, you're tired of searching through cardboard box after cardboard box, climbing over the things buried in your closet, searching for one specific thing you very well might have lost.

You heave and pull out another moving box, one filled with your clothes, and start digging.

When suddenly, there it is. Crumpled up and wedged in the crease. Blue cashmere material rests under your fingertips, and you're honestly surprised when it doesn't singe your fingers.

When you pull it out of the box, it's like you're tearing the past out of _its_ box, out of the compartment you forced it into. Holding the sweater, you hear voices. Not ones that make you think you're going crazy. Just voices, whispers, mementos you thought you had dropped a long time ago.

"_Come on, am I really so bad?_"

"_No. I am._"

Your correction comes about two years too late. _We both are_.

After slipping it over your head almost ceremoniously, you give yourself one final, hard look in the mirror – you look different. Not like you looked back then. But maybe that's not so bad.

You get into your car and drive, a route you've taken before, through stomach-twisting nervousness and heart-wrenching pain. There's that mix this time, but you're able to keep going, focusing on the destination.

This will amount to either the best decision or worst mistake of your life.

Blue door, apartment 501. You reach out, leaning over a chasm, so close to the end of that tightrope, and if you just stretch a little bit farther, adjust your center of balance…

You knock, three times.

When he opens the door, he's not wearing that gray t-shirt, so it's not perfect. But that's fine, you remind yourself. That's absolutely fine. Perfection was the problem in the first place.

Just like before, you speak first, cutting him off before he has the chance to ask what you're doing here. You force the first words, almost spitting them out.

"You're killing me." He stares, trying not to look completely bewildered (and kind of failing). You take a deep breath and go on, knowing that this will hurt before it feels better; you learned that a long time ago. You let your mouth go, for once trusting it to make the right decisions. If you had to think about it, you wouldn't know what to say. "You make it impossible for me to breathe. I've been slowly suffocating for months. Whenever you're around me, it's…it's like I'm paralyzed. Thoughts, words, actions, everything. Gone."

He's still staring as if he can't believe you're standing at his door. "I'm on fire, all the time. One of these days I'll burn up and blow away. It actually _hurts_ to be near you. But it hurts to be away from you as well." Little pieces of you break off and fall away, scattered by a gust of wind until they're absolutely irretrievable. "And, obviously, I keep coming back and it's because I'm still in love with you. Okay? And I guess no matter what you say to me, this isn't going to go away. No matter what, it'll hurt." You swallow hard, fighting back the tears that bite at your eyes. "I want to be with you, even if it makes me miserable. It got me. I'm here."

And you're shaking harder than ever before, adrenaline pumping like crazy, because you finally called it love to his face and it's the most terrifying thing ever, but you feel like you're soaring.

He's still not doing anything. Not saying anything. Just _staring. _You sigh in exasperation, praying that you're not making a complete fool of yourself.

"If you want me, take me before I realize what an idiot I am and get the sense to walk away again."

It feels like an eternity as you stand there, laying out everything you've been keeping inside of you for him to see. If he wanted more proof, you could give it to him. Graphs, tables, notated facts. You'd sit down and plot them out, write them by hand. Whatever he wanted. Just let it be over, you beg. Closing your eyes, you repeat this three times in your head.

And Mark grabs your cheeks, kissing you hard, giving you your answer; you breathe sharply against his open mouth, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt.

--

Later, you're lying in bed with him, skirting the edges of consciousness; every so often, you dip below the velvety surface of sleep, skimming there for a moment or two before you're awake again. Your bodies aren't twisted around one another. It's not that kind of reunion, like in the movies where everyone's happy. The hollow pain is still there, but it's getting duller, or maybe you're just getting used to it. But you're not thinking about that right now, not dwelling on how this is going to work or what you'll have to do, how you'll have to change to fit this. You're not thinking at all.

You _can't_ think when he's looking at you like that.

Like he's watching your every breath. Like he's taking this moment and trying to stretch it over months. Like if he says the wrong thing or does something stupid, you'll be gone forever. Like he'd fight off an army to keep you right where you are.

He's holding your wrist, gently, thumb over your pulse point. When he realizes that you're paying attention, his grip tightens just a little bit. A chill races down your spine.

This can never, _ever_ be what it once was. It can't turn out the way you once dreamed.

Life changes you. Situations, people, time itself…they all grab you, fighting with one another for that first squeeze, shaping you into someone you don't recognize. Ugly, beautiful, satisfied, depressed, absolutely anything. It's nothing you can control. It's constantly fluctuating, moving fluidly from second to second.

And this person lying in Mark Sloan's bed still isn't the you that you remember. You still feel strange and awkward on the inside. But that's okay, you suppose. Maybe it means you're growing up. The Lexie Grey from once upon a time wouldn't be here right now.

And you are.

It'll take a while to learn about this person. To look into every window, investigate everything about her, memorize the little details: this racing pulse, these breathing lungs, these lips that curl involuntarily into a tiny smile. But one day, you'll be used to this new you. The light and the dark, the brave and the terrified, what's good, what's bad, what's in-between.

If he tries, maybe he can get used to you too. Maybe you can get used to him. And then maybe you won't be alone in this beautiful mess you've created.

--

_So come, come love and take me home…_


End file.
